Sunlight on the Wabash

If you went down the street from 7071 Winona, you'd find yourself on Wabash Avenue. Today,

I think, it has four lanes divided by a median. In the early fifties, Wabash was a two-lane,

bumpy road, the outpost of civilization. The expansion of Wabash Avenue took place one

summer when the Hohlfelds lived at 7071.

In summers past, four of the neighborhood girls had a lemonade stand. The four entrepernuers were JoAnn who lived on the corne, Diane and I lived nearer the top of the hill, and Linda's house was between the other two.

We did our best, but you can yell "Get Your Lemonade Here" only so many times.

The mailman was always a pushover, as were parents, and we were not above giving each other

freebies. As we sat at our kid-sized table and sat on the steps, or lawn, we tried to entice the

Meyer kids to buy our product. The Meyers lived across the street and we really never knew exactly how many kids there were. We considered ourselves well-compensated if even half of them had enough money to buy a Dixie cup full of the homemade elixir.

Our good- ship lemonade came in when work began on Wabash. Every day, employees of

several city public works departments descended on the Wabash work- in- progress. I don't

know whose idea it was to sell lemonade at the corner of Wabash and Winona, but it was magnificent. Those workmen wanted lemonade from the minute they came on duty, until

at least 5, sometimes 6, o'clock. It was one of the hottest summers on record. As the

temperatures soared, so did our lemonade sales. If the men did not have change, they gave

us a dollar and we took 15 cents at a time off their reverse tab. Sometimes, they had their own

thermos bottles and we went back to Linda's house to fill the big orders. Mind you this was not Kool Aid or powdered-drink mix. We used frozen concentrate and Linda's mom helped us fill the large orders. Every night we would make up vast quantities for the next day.

I can't imagine that such an enterprise could take place today. Parents would not trust the

highway workers, kids would not be able to get that close to the work crews, and the

workers can get a 32-ounce drink for 49 cents.

Needless to say, the next summer lemonade sales were a real letdown. But at least that one summer we were wealthy. What did we do with our money: Put ourselves through college, buy a pony, go on a cruise? No, I think we used most of our profits to buy treats from the Ice Cream Man with whom we shared the turf.

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